Stone on Stone E-Book

Imogen Corrigan

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale Non Fiction
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 504

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Standing in the nave of a cathedral, it is hard not to wonder how ordinary human beings could have created sky-scraping, dizzyingly high buildings on which even the top-most parts were delicately decorated, in an age before even the simplest of power tools. Stone on Stone presents the full story of the men who built the cathedrals of the medieval era: who they were, how they lived and how with the simplest of hand tools they created the astonishing buildings that hundreds of years later still stand as monuments to their ingenuity and skill. Topics covered include the context for building such huge places of worship; the men who built: who they were, and the challenges they had to face; finding the materials; construction techniques; building control and finally, who paid for it all.

Leseprobe

IMOGEN CORRIGAN

STONE ON STONE

The men who built the cathedrals

ROBERT HALE

First published in 2018 by

Robert Hale, an imprint ofThe Crowood Press Ltd,

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2019

© Imogen Corrigan 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library.

ISBN 978 0 71982 799 0

The right of Imogen Corrigan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

CONTENTS

Figures

Introduction

Chapter One: New technology or new spirituality?

Chapter Two: Paving the way

Chapter Three: The Master Masons I

Chapter Four: The Master Masons II

Chapter Five: Building controls

Chapter Six: Training and beyond

Chapter Seven: Ideas and people travelling

Chapter Eight: Patronage

Chapter Nine: How did they do it?

Afterword

Appendix I: Trades associated with a medieval building site

Appendix II: Breakdown of Master Masons’ original trades

Notes

Bibliography

Index

For Bridget Harrison

According to the grace of God which is given to me, as a wisemasterbuilder, I have laid the foundations, and anotherbuildeth thereon.

1 Corinthians 3: 10–15

FIGURES

1 Ground plan for Roman basilica – page 14

2 Ground plan for cathedral – page 14

The following figures are provided within a plate section:

Plate 1 Abbaye aux Dames, Caen – an example of the Romanesque style.

Plate 2 Salisbury cathedral – an example of the Gothic style.

Plate 3 Buttressing as seen at Amiens cathedral, Picardy.

Plate 4 Tracery on a damaged window at Soissons, Hauts-de-France.

Plate 5 The hard-working oxen at Laon.

Plate 6 The tomb of William de Wermington at Crowland Abbey.

Plate 7 The tomb of Hughes Libergier at Rheims.

Plate 8 The tomb of Adam Lock at Wells cathedral.

Plate 9 The likeness of Henry Yevele on this boss at Canterbury was probably taken from his death mask.

Plate 10 The font at Bridekirk.

Plate 11 The beautiful and functional scissors arch at Wells cathedral.

Plate 12 Rheims cathedral – an inspiration for Henry III’s remodelling of Westminster Abbey.

Plate 13 Westminster Abbey.

Plate 14 The font at Stradbroke.

Plate 15 Arlingham church.

Plate 16 Putlogs.

Plate 17 Detail from the façade of Nimes cathedral, showing masons at work.

Plate 18 Detail from capitals in St Mark’s Square, Venice, showing sculptors at work.

INTRODUCTION

STANDING IN THE nave of Ely cathedral when I was fourteen I became bored with the local guide telling us how long and how high and how many tiles, and I started wondering how on earth ordinary human beings could have created such sky-scraping, dizzyingly high buildings on which even the uppermost parts were delicately decorated. ‘How?’, ‘why?’ and ‘for whom?’ were my unanswered questions. For God, for personal redemption and to make a living are the answers to the last two questions, but the ‘how’ was harder to fathom. I set out to find the Master Masons – the men who both designed the buildings and ran the construction site. They commanded everything, whether it was sourcing vast quantities of wood and stone, recruiting the workforce, working out the budget, or having enough knowledge about the numerous trades on site to be able to create Heaven on earth out of the cacophony of thousands of chisels and hammers.

Their aim was to do exactly that: the churches were not just for the glory of God, but so that the medieval man and woman would have a better understanding of Paradise through being able to see it on earth. The Master Masons saw themselves as building the City of Heaven or as reconstructing Solomon’s Temple, which was a privilege, but also a responsibility. As time went on, men who could create such structures took on a near superstar status. Our ancestors have been criticized (and were at the time, too) for spending huge sums when there was so much need elsewhere, but to take that line is to ignore the fact that they were also fulfilling a genuine need to get closer to God and to the saints. It was the saints and the Church in general who got people through what was often a daily grind. They offered hope and protection and, if you were really lucky, a miraculous cure from illness. The churches and cathedrals offered physical shelter, mystique and beauty; another way to take your mind off what could be the grim reality of daily life. As you read this book, always keep in your mind that the population believed in God and the next life, and that their daily lives were shaped by the Church calendar. Sadly, this did not stop them from misbehaving – even Master Masons fell from grace occasionally, as we shall see. Also, bear in mind that people could repent either in the sense of Confession or by donations, and some gave significant amounts to church building as a way of salving their consciences. Happily, most led God-fearing lives, but I always point out that our ancestors are just like us: they were intelligent, intellectual, optimistic, miserable, sympathetic and jealous, generous and greedy. They shared our hopes and fears for their children and their own future, they had a sharp sense of humour and they wanted to live in comfort. They simply danced to a different beat and that was the beat of Christianity, which both awed and sustained them.

It is an astonishing fact that many of our greatest cathedrals were built against a backdrop of plague, other persistent diseases and warfare. It also surprises people today that Master Masons were willing to embark on projects that they knew could not possibly be finished in their own lifetime. On the other hand, the period we call the Middle Ages was a time of innovation and experimentation with new artistic and architectural ideas, all of which Master Masons seem to have embraced. We can see the results, but not always the making: remarkably few manuals have survived, if they were ever written. Apprentice training was rigorous and no doubt repetitive. It became highly regulated so that only the most competent made it through to their basic trade, and most would have been content to stay at that level. No one began as a Master Mason. They all started their professional life on the lowest rung of the ladder, so to speak, training and working as stone-cutters, masons or carvers. Only a particular few made it to the status of Master Mason, and they were the ones who were not only especially talented craftsmen, but who also proved to be charismatic leaders.

That said, they were continually checked by their fellow Master Masons in the interests of making a building as strong as possible: we only see their successes, after all. They were real people who got into trouble with the law, who occasionally cheated on contracts, who liked to start a job but not to finish it. Some of them were highly litigious (always a blessing to future historians) and some took their place amongst the great of the land. It was unusual for them not to become wealthy and many were famous in their own lifetime even, occasionally, having the privilege of being buried in a prestigious place within the cathedral they were working on. We know the names of hundreds of Master Masons (and sometimes of their workforce, too), but there must have been many more who have disappeared into the blur of history.

The question of how they did it cannot be answered in full, but I hope that this book goes some way towards realizing the hopes and hurdles they had to cross, the kind of issues that they had to take into account, and how they overcame problems as they built. Their creations remain to this day; some breathtakingly beautiful in their exquisite detail, causing us, centuries later, to stand and wonder.

I would like to thank all those who have helped along the way and are too many to list by name, whether they have pointed me in the right direction or allowed me to run free in their church. I visited most English cathedrals and many European ones in the preparation of this book. I was impressed again and again by the welcome received, from Durham to Canterbury and everywhere in between, so my heartfelt thanks to those who stopped to answer foolish questions from yet another visitor. I am fortunate to be a lecturer on Anglo-Saxon and medieval history and art, and am keenly aware of the support I have had from individuals in audiences whose sharp questions have sometimes given me a new line of enquiry to follow. I am sorry that I do not know your names. Likewise, there has been massive anonymous support in the form of hundreds of churches left open for passers-by to visit; this is worth more than rubies to struggling researchers, as are the legions of volunteers working in great cathedrals and modest parishes, giving out leaflets and welcome in equal measure.

I am grateful to all those who have laboured to translate documents to enable me to read these so easily, and I am most particularly indebted to the late Dr John Harvey whose biographical dictionary of Master Masons has been the single most valuable source, often pointing me in the direction of more detailed information. I am older and wiser at the end of the project, but delighted to have been able to do it. Nowadays, it is common to describe any undertaking as a real journey, but this really has been one such: I have travelled miles and only wish that my understanding had grown in proportion. Mine eyes have truly seen some glories. Lastly, but most importantly, I have been especially lucky in the continual encouragement, friendship and positive suggestions from Winston B. Brown, John Cooper, Jackie Cooke, Bridget Harrison, Dr Luella Hibous, Pat May, Caroline Stapleton, Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, and most particularly from David Spenceley, not to mention my long-suffering and faintly gob-smacked heroic husband, Gordon, who might not mind if he never hears about a cathedral ever again.

CHAPTER ONE

NEW TECHNOLOGY OR NEW SPIRITUALITY?

Establishing the basic shape of a cathedral

BEFORE WE MEET the Master Masons themselves, we need to think about what was at the centre of their being: the cathedral. More especially, we need to consider how the shape of the building developed, which was, after all, critical to the overall plan. In cathedrals and churches, the shape is more important than it might first seem because this affected the spread of the religion. While it is obvious that there cannot be too many variations in the shape of any structure required for public gatherings, the Roman basilica’s internal floor plan was suited to Christian meetings because it was essentially an oblong hall with a rounded apse at the most significant part, for it was within the apse that an altar could be placed.

Figures 1 and 2 show basic layouts for both a basilica and a later Gothic cathedral, and it is plain to see how complex the central design became. Early missionaries as far back as the fourth and fifth centuries AD discovered that a large narthex, or porch attached to the basilica, was an important factor and a useful aid to recruiting: anyone could go inside to shelter from the elements, conduct business or simply meet friends. While they were there, they would be able to hear the strangely soothing and seductive mantras of the liturgy being carried out and, no doubt, smell the incense used more liberally then than now. There would normally be three doorways from the porch into the church through which the curious could stare, although the uninitiated would not be permitted to go into the main part of the building, which was reserved for those fortunate enough to have been saved spiritually. One might imagine the craning of necks and whispering in the outer porch; Christianity was new to many and therefore either exciting or perhaps horrifying. It would be natural for many to feel extremely uneasy about this new religion, as anyone would if asked to discard whatever spiritual practice and belief had been ingrained from childhood. By the fourth century AD, Christianity was now seen as a definite religion as opposed to a group of people following the teachings of a charismatic speaker. Enough people had died for it to make it both interesting and credible. The Emperor Constantine’s embracing it gave it authority and status, and promises of eternal life and/or relief from physical or mental pain had to make it worth a second look.

1 Ground plan for Roman basilica

2 Ground plan for cathedral

Rumours will have circulated in the porch about miracles happening in the name of Jesus Christ and the saints. Local Christian teachers would have sat there, talking to passers-by and the interested and thus this square, almost empty space became a valuable part of the conversion process. In parish churches later, the porch would become the place where civil business was conducted as well as marriage services. It became a space for business for the local community, which is why some later porches are very large, having benches and often niches for statues and holy water to be used in the swearing of oaths. Some porches still have an upper room, which was used for parish meetings and schooling. Given that illustrations have always been an important part of missionary work, stories from the life of Christ or key elements of Christianity would have been painted on the walls or carved over the doorways.

Baptism was the next step. In the ruins of the early Christian basilica at Soli in North Cyprus, which was built in the second half of the fourth century AD, one can see the remains of the baptizing pool just inside the church, immediately beyond the door on the southern side of the porch. In effect, no one could get past without having been admitted to Christianity. To this day, the font is often still placed so close to the main entrance of the church that it is almost an obstacle, a constant reminder of the beginning of the Christian journey, although many congregations have now moved the font to make the baptizing area more central. Once inside the inner building, the newly converted could stand with the others in the areas we know as side aisles. In missionary churches of this style, the aisles would not be open plan and marked with pillars, as they are now, but physically separated by a low wall or fence so that ordinary Christians could see and join in, but not enter. It seems that the congregation could approach as far as the choir area to watch, making the place similar to a theatre with a protruding stage on which the priests would perform. This, again, was an important tool for conversion. There was little enough entertainment for the majority anyway, so the ritual carried out against a backdrop of candlelight, with precious vessels and vestments glinting gold and gorgeous manuscripts glimpsed through a haze of incense, would have been extremely impressive.

In the Roman pagan administrative hall (the basilica), there was often a small room known as a porticus, which was accessed from the inside. Sometimes there were two projecting from each side of the building about two-thirds of the way along. When built for Christian purposes, these became small chapels, or even offices, as can be seen marked out on the ground, for example, beside the remains of the seventh-century church at Bradwell-juxta-Mare on the Essex coast. Much later on, these would be extended into the arms known as transepts, which transform the ground plan of the building into the shape of the cross. Gradually, usage and changes in architectural styles would alter the basic floor plan, but the basilica shape appears to have been an effective starting point. St Augustine of Canterbury, travelling from Rome at the end of the sixth century AD, would have been familiar with the basilica-style layout, although we do not know if he intended to impose it on England. Early Anglo-Saxon churches, especially those in the north of England such as Escomb and the older parts of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow reveal a preference for a narrow, single-celled building. These northern churches are a useful indication as to how things might have been because of the influence of Benedict Biscop, who accompanied Theodore, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, from Rome in 668–9, worked with him for a couple of years, and then returned to the north-east where he founded the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. The designs are often disproportionately tall, with steeply pointed roofs almost as though they are an arrow pointing upwards, which might have been part of the plan.

Winning hearts, minds and souls

There is, therefore, no doubt that buildings were used as tools for conversion. They had to be impressive to send out the straightforward message that the Christian God was greater than any other gods. We should remember that what look to us to be relatively small-scale stone buildings would have been more striking at a time when most buildings were constructed out of wood or other organic materials. The great builders in stone – the Romans – had left Britain at the beginning of the fifth century AD so their buildings had by now either fallen into decay or been recycled into town walls. The Anglo-Saxon inclination was to build in wood so, while we look at the tenth-century stone church of St Lawrence at Bradford-upon-Avon in Wiltshire, and marvel at its survival, medieval people would have just looked and marvelled. These comparatively small stone churches would also have towered above the wooden, thatched dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons and most would have been visible from some way off. They would have been something so utterly different on the landscape that the simple fact of their presence would have been remarkable to the passer-by. In modern parlance, the ‘wow’ factor presented by Anglo-Saxon churches is something difficult to imagine in today’s steel-and-concrete built environment. The desire of early Anglo-Saxon Master Masons (and records of a few have come down to us) was not simply to build to the glory of God, but also to provide a roof below which conversion and Christianity could take place – but first the missionary priests had to encourage people to gather below that roof.

It seems likely that the earliest church buildings would have been wooden lean-to arrangements, probably constructed by the priests themselves with local help. But, as Christianity took hold across Britain and Europe, church building progressed from a form of frontier outposts to more impressive monuments to God. The larger ones could attempt to instruct the masses and encourage the priests in a more distinctive way: they could try to recreate Heaven on earth, and this is important. Not only is the Bible peppered with building metaphors, but also with numerous allusions to the Heavenly City. In addition, the Old Testament offers specific details about temple building.1 The Master Masons did not use these references as any form of template – they were too vague – but they will have noted that there are allusions to structured, planned places in the after-life. This was most notable in the New Testament book of Revelations 3 and, especially, Revelations 21, which was often taken as the authority to lavish fortunes on the decoration of cathedrals and churches. Again, a cathedral was not necessarily built to the specifications laid down, but by the time of the eleventh century there was a great desire to get physically closer to God and to try to understand some of the immense mystery surrounding Him. God was seen as being all-powerful, yet also extremely personal: all sins were known and noted. The risk of damnation was great, but the chance of salvation was also high if one took the right steps. There was much to play for.

The early missionary bishops did not need a huge building so much as an impressive one because such a building was visual propaganda. In England, we tend to think that a cathedral should be vast in size, but this has not always been the case. The building that holds the cathedra (the bishop’s seat) is the cathedral, but the building does not have to be much bigger than a large parish church; size is not always important. In the south of France, for example, there are several delightful cathedrals, such as the one at Lescar, which are not cathedral-sized according to usual expectation. One is not overwhelmed and awed by the sight of Lescar’s cathedral, either inside or out, but one is conscious of being in a church of status and one is delighted by the capital carvings and the unusual mosaics.

Why did building styles evolve?

The basic shape for the Christian building was now established, but there were regional variations – indeed, there still are. How did the building of a cathedral evolve to take the form we associate with the Middle Ages? How and why did it change from solid Romanesque to soaring Gothic? As can be seen at Caen, in Normandy, and at Salisbury, in Wiltshire, there is a marked difference between the plainer-seeming, strong-looking Romanesque of the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen (seeplate 1) and the more ethereal, highly decorated Gothic of Salisbury cathedral (seeplate 2). The round-arched, strongly built church form had endured as a pattern for centuries and was to continue to do so in southern Europe and Byzantium. Why then was there such a marked changed in style in western and northern Europe, and how did it become so popular so quickly? Was it the result of an advance in technology, a change in artistic taste or some difference in the expression of spirituality? All three is the most likely answer, although the last two factors are the hardest to quantify and were probably linked, since the form of the buildings expressed not just the desire of the heart but were a critical part of the never-ending quest of the soul. As to why the new style was so attractive to the north and west of Europe and less so to the south, there is no obvious answer other than that different styles appeal to different people. The thicker walls and smaller windows of Romanesque architecture keep the interior cooler than does Gothic.

Middle Eastern influences

To consider the technical side of cathedral building first, we know that the Middle Ages saw just as much innovation as any other period in history, but that at this time great advances were being made in the building trades. This was partly because there was so much building work taking place. Consequently, Master Masons had more opportunities to experiment with different decorative ideas and local materials, and to compare work happening on one site with work on others, as well as being able to exchange ideas with journeymen from all over Europe. Expertises (of which more in Chapter 5) and other regulatory bodies, such as guilds, certainly helped to spread ideas and improve working practices throughout the industry. Some of the new machinery and ideas appear to have come from the Middle East and are presumed to have arrived in Britain with returning pilgrims and Crusaders.

This notion that Crusaders came back with a new approach to building is reinforced by some of the distinctly Arabic shapes that became so much a feature of Gothic architectural decoration: octagons, hexagons, quatrefoils, ogee domes and geometric patterns are all reminiscent of building in Arabia or Moorish Spain. Also in favour of the Crusaders as a conduit for technology is the timing of the change from Romanesque to Gothic. The Moors, or Berber tribes, had been in Spain since AD 711, so one might have expected to see their artistic influence earlier than the twelfth century if the Gothic style had been inspired by them. The First Crusade had been proclaimed in November 1095 by Pope Urban II to protect pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land and Christian holy places, then under threat from Seljuk conquests, and the campaign culminated in the Fall of Jerusalem in July 1099. At the very beginning of the twelfth century, the first vaulted roof seen in Western Europe was constructed at Durham cathedral, which has some of the finest Romanesque architecture anywhere. The roof could have been due to the influence of newly gained Middle Eastern knowledge, or even the arrival locally of a Saracen mason taken as prisoner. We know that this was the fate of at least one man who came to be known as ‘Lalys’. He was captured and taken to South Wales where he made his name as a Master Mason and was said eventually to have been employed by Henry I.2

All that being so, one problem with aligning artistic changes with the Crusades is that then one might expect more copies of the ultimate Christian site – the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. That church’s rotunda must have made a strong impression and, indeed, most round churches are associated with the Knights Templar. Some, though, are most definitely not: for example, the tiny round chapel at Lanleff in Brittany, where a notice states emphatically that no man from that village ever went on crusade (no reason is given why). The counter-argument is that the round choir is, indeed, seen in the Gothic cathedral, but taking the form of a rounded end that grows from the body of the church. However, this does not stand up to scrutiny because, as mentioned, churches have long had a rounded apse as a hangover from the shape of a Roman basilica. The rotunda itself is seen in England in the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury. This was begun by Abbot Wulfric II in 1050 (though never completed) – a good half-century before any crusade, although people from Britain had travelled to the Holy Land before that (the earliest recorded English pilgrim to the Holy Land was St Willibald in AD 722). The rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre also dates to the middle of the eleventh century.

But the evidence of Middle Eastern influences cannot be denied. Today, were we to design a building, we would expect to draw it out using measurements in number format. This would be so elementary that I doubt many of us would think twice about it, but such thinking was less obvious – indeed, not obvious at all – to the early medieval Master Masons. They used Roman numerals and went on doing so until surprisingly late in history. The Roman system, which substitutes letters for numbers, does work and is still used to this day (not least, to distinguish between kings and other rulers). We would not, however, dream of trying to use the Roman system to add or subtract, and with Roman numerals multiplication and division seem difficult beyond belief. To work out problems such as how long it was between the Battles of Hastings and Bosworth, one would have to subtract MLXVI from MCDLXXXV. The answer, of course, is CDXIX. It is all the more remarkable that the Romans were such great builders themselves, proving that such a system of numbering, though unwieldy, was not impossible to use.

A number sequence using Arabic numerals appears to have been started in India and been used in the Middle East as early as the sixth century. Given that trade routes between Europe, India and Africa had been established by the Romans and given that they were not afraid to embrace new technology, it is odd that the Romans themselves did not adopt the numerals they found there (not least because they did use an abacus for quick reckoning). The first surviving record of Arabic numerals in the West (but only the numbers one to nine, not zero) has been found in the Codex Vigilanus, which was compiled in AD 976, suggesting that the Indian-Arabic method was introduced into Spain c.900 but, again, does not seem to have spread widely beyond this. These numerals cannot have been extensively used throughout the Arab lands because when a Persian engineer and mathematician of the early eleventh century, al-Karkhi, wrote several treatises on calculation he frequently wrote out the numbers as words, presumably to make it clear to his audience.

One of the many changes that occurred in the twelfth century was that serious medical knowledge arrived in Europe from the Middle East. Much of that knowledge had, in turn, originated from ancient Greece. Although medical usage of herbs and so on was highly developed in Europe, attempts to gain more technical knowledge had been regarded with suspicion. This was a time when Christianity taught that the soul was more important than the body and anyone going to help someone who was sick or injured would be advised to send for the priest and to ensure that he had priority in the sick-room. Indeed, that was the ruling laid down by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. If someone really needed medical help, they were advised to choose the appropriate saint and ask him or her for relief, or even for a miracle; it was part of how both the Church and society operated. Arabic and Jewish peoples thought differently, with the result that their scientific expertise was streets ahead of that in Western Europe. When it came to mathematics, science and medicine, the thinkers of the Middle East were by far and away the leaders in what was then the known world; indeed, words such as algebra, alchemy, alkaline and alcohol have all come to us from Arabic. So, it is not hard to understand that, in the more constructive climate of learning of the Middle East, thinking about the technical aspects of everything also flourished, and this included building and all types of machinery.

Some examples of building machinery influenced by the Middle East

It is hard to quantify what this machinery might precisely have been, although for building it seems likely that it included more sophisticated devices for lifting, measuring and cutting. Sadly, the chroniclers of the time failed to mention the minutiae of a building site. Inventories and other such useful documents are few and far between. The windlass was known in Europe around the year AD 600 since it was described in the last book of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (also referred to as the encyclopaedia of all things known). The windlass was a useful, albeit unwieldy, apparatus, but probably not as miserable to operate as the human-driven treadmills that go back to Roman times, if not before. There is an image of a manned treadmill on a first-century tomb of the Haterii, now in the Vatican. They were effective because it has been calculated that one man working inside an 8ft-diameter wheel could lift a weight of about twelve hundred pounds, but such wheels frequently caused injury to the human ‘hamsters’ who operated them.3 Nonetheless, they appear in numerous manuscript illustrations well into the sixteenth century, so they were evidently the lifting machine of choice; some illustrations show numerous tread-wheels of various sizes at all levels of the building under construction. This type of machinery was still in use in the nineteenth century when John Stuart Mill described them as ‘unequalled in the modern annals of legalised torture’. It was often easier to leave them in situ than to dismantle them and, anyway, lifting machines might later be needed for repairs, so occasionally treadmill-cranes can be seen today, for example, in Salisbury and Canterbury cathedrals.

In about 1475 William Orchard paid the abbot of Rewley 10s for a ‘great instrument called a crane to lift stones and mortar high up over the wall’, and in 1482 William Prentice was paid for repairing a crane at Cambridge.4 These are late-medieval references and only available to us through surviving financial accounts, but it does not mean that cranes were not in use in Britain earlier than that. A system of counter-balancing weights and pulleys would have been a significant advance on the building site, just to get materials moved about quickly, and this may be the type of technology that returning Crusaders brought home with them.

Styles of vaulting

Rib vaulting is one of the distinctive features of Gothic architecture that is so much a part of our cathedrals in Britain. Quadripartite vaulting (ceilings divided into four sections) is the most usual sort, and frequently found in parish churches as well. When six-part or sexpartite, vaulting is used as, for example, at Laon in northern France, it can produce a wonderful decorative effect because the ribs can be extended down into alternating columns that might be of different sizes, which adds to the overall rhythm of the building. As confidence in vaulting grew, smaller and purely decorative ribs were added, known as tiercerons and liernes. These could be used to make increasingly intricate patterns and, interspersed with the roof bosses especially beloved of British cathedral builders, could make the ceiling a sea of dazzling art in itself. There were some things that the British Master Masons made their very own and were you to wake up and find yourself in a strange cathedral, one way of establishing that you were on home ground, at least, would be to look at the roof. In Britain, roof bosses very often form a row of studs right down the centre of the nave and perhaps into the choir as well – rather like a zip fastener. This has been done with marvellous results at Exeter, Hereford, Lincoln and Norwich cathedrals, to mention but a few. The overall effect helps the eye understand the length of the building, but each boss has its own design. These are sometimes just leafy designs, but they often tell biblical stories or show iconographic symbols. They are an art form in themselves, many cathedrals providing a large, mobile mirror so that they can be examined. The British Master Masons then went a step further and produced fan vaulting, one of the best examples being in the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral. Again, this is rarely seen on the Continent, but is also found in some of Britain’s more prosperous parish churches, such as in Ottery St Mary in East Devon or in the Wilcote Chapel of St Mary’s, North Leigh, in Oxfordshire.

The reason this could be done so effectively was because rib vaulting distributes the weight differently from a standard flat or barrel roof. Just as a rounded arch is a stronger structure than a flat roof resting on two or more uprights, so a pointed arch can dispense weight downwards. If you add buttressing to stop the weight from pushing the walls outwards, you can make it so that not all of the roof is required to be a solid mass, but can be merely decorative. There is nearly always a gap between the ceiling and the outer roof and, therefore, one could argue that it is the construction of the roof that is the critical element in the shaping of the new-look cathedrals, but it might be helpful to consider just what the specific differences are between Romanesque and Gothic architecture.

The features of Romanesque and Gothic architecture

In England, the Anglo-Saxon church designers had gone for the tall, narrow, single-cell buildings with the rounded apse already mentioned, while a sturdier form was adopted on the other side of the English Channel. After the Conquest, that Continental style was introduced in Britain, where it is known as ‘Norman’. More universally, it is known as ‘Romanesque’, but this tag was not allocated until the 1830s when critics intended it as an insult to those designers who copied the Roman style of building. In effect, it was like Roman, but was not as good, being a caricature of their great work. This was then gradually applied to any building – not just nineteenth-century ones – that were in the Roman style, but not actually built by the Romans. This may sound surprising to us, living as we do in an age where anything new in art terms is greeted with applause, even if it is hard to see where the skill lies. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France and England, the art critic reigned supreme, making it all but impossible for someone with new ideas to get their work displayed, as the Pre-Raphaelites, and later the Impressionists, were to discover. In a similar way, the term ‘Gothic’ was intended as an insult, although one that dates back to the 1640s. The Goths were synonymous with barbarians, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths being aggressive peoples not famous for working in harmony with their neighbours. A Visigothic army under Alaric I eventually moved into Italy and sacked Rome in AD 410. It seems a little excessive now to associate the violence of those times with some of our greatest architecture.

Romanesque has rounded arches between immense columns, and small windows set into very thick walls. Gothic has pointed arches, visible buttresses and expanses of glass set in thinner walls. The art of sculptures and manuscripts associated with Romanesque is stylized and often angular with etiolated figures, but also very often made with a light touch, in contrast to the buildings. Gothic sculptural style is softer, much more natural to look at; its statues have far more realistic facial expressions. Whereas Romanesque/Norman architecture had tended to have smaller stones, roughly cut, and roofs supported by immense columns, Gothic had larger stones of smoother dressed ashlar.5 This again reinforces the idea that some form of lifting device had been discovered or developed, since blocks had been cut smaller before (presumably to make them easier to move around the building site) and early manuscript illustrations show stones being carried by one man in a hod, or two men on a stretcher. The north transept of Winchester cathedral offers us useful evidence here because it has two rounded Romanesque arches, side by side, but one dates to about 1080 and the other to 1108, following the need to make repairs. There is a discernible difference, not just in the size of the stones, but in the quality of their cut. New techniques meant that more accurately cut and smoother-finished stones could be laid in regular courses, giving an even face and finer joints. This gradually did away with the need for bulky columns, which were often hollow in the middle and filled with rubble cores, and allowed walls and shafts to become thin and slender. Unfortunately, over the centuries, the rubble filling in the columns has often packed down, leaving the support for the rest of the building considerably less substantial than the Master Mason had originally intended; as a result, these have become a grave source of concern and fund-raising today.

The obvious stylistic change that Gothic brought was the vanquishing of these mammoth columns, some so stout that their diameter is equal to their height. They were often deeply incised with chevron and other patterns, and are works of art in themselves still visible in the cathedrals of Durham, Norwich, Bayeux, and in Waltham Abbey. These robust-looking columns, which held up lower roofs, were replaced by slender-seeming pillars, sometimes grouped together in bundles soaring to roofs of a greater height. Sometimes this is a trick of the eye, of course; they are rarely individual slender pillars, but do, in fact, comprise one single mighty column cut to create that effect. Very often a Romanesque nave has had a Gothic layer added to make up its height, so both sorts of architecture can be seen at once. Buttressing has been mentioned. This characteristically Gothic feature is essential to act as a brace, holding the structure of the building together, and it arouses mixed feelings: some say that it makes the cathedral look as though it is suspended between spokes and adds to its air of fragility, while others may think that it looks like a gigantic spider crossed with a Meccano set. Either way, when we look at the buttressing we are seeing the workings of the building; there is nothing discreet about this feature, but they become part of the art form at Paris, Rheims, Le Mans, Amiens and numerous others. The spokes of the buttresses often have fancy shapes or tracery cut into them, partly no doubt to help them stand up to strong winds. For example, at Amiens, the buttress tracery is appropriately shaped like small windows (seeplate 3). They might also have carvings added, ferocious beasts perhaps, to guard the holy end of the church. The progression of this type of Gothic art can be tracked from the plain yet functional buttressing that makes up the chevet (rounded end) of Vézelay’s choir, built c.1165, to the riot of tiny turrets and fleurs-de-lys that adorn Rheims (1211–1241) and Cologne (1248–1322).

The new-style roofs and buttressing and improved lifting devices combined so that, in general, Gothic cathedrals are significantly taller than Romanesque, not counting any spires that may have been added. In France, in particular, they built higher and higher with mixed results, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, the internal height of Beauvais cathedral being over 48m (157ft). The staggering height of these buildings (even more staggering to our medieval ancestors than to us) was very much part of the spirituality of the time. As we have already seen, there was a desire to create Heaven on earth; at the same time, why not try to reach physically up to it as well? Everything, from the sharpened arches to the pinnacle decorations and spires pointing upwards, was there to remind our ancestors of the way their miserable earthly efforts should be directed. Perhaps the English were more prosaic? In England, at least, cathedrals are noted for their great length more than their height.

The outstanding feature of the new Gothic style was glass. Because there was now so much less weight on the walls, there was also far more scope for the walls to be decorated in a way that had never been seen before. Coloured window glass had been used for centuries and, indeed, had been introduced to Britain c.680 when Benedict Biscop installed it at Jarrow, but it had never been possible to have acres of it. In Romanesque churches, windows had been smaller, so the buildings were naturally much darker inside. Interior decoration depended on murals and tapestries, many of which probably could not be seen properly in the gloom. Large numbers of candles were deployed which, when combined with the tapestries and wooden roofs, spelt the death-knell of many Romanesque buildings. The effect of expanses of glass on the inside of the building was dramatic, and many felt that it was the most significant advance not just in architecture, but in gaining an insight into Heaven.

Abbot Suger and his architectural experiment

The man who is generally held to have been responsible for it all was Abbot Suger, who lived from about 1081 to 1151 and who was in charge of the abbey of St-Denis, then a separate entity from Paris, but now part of its northern suburbs. He was a most extraordinary man and so were his works. He was not the oldest son of his family and so had been given to the abbey as a child-oblate; he identified with that place so strongly that he felt it to be part of his very existence. At the time, the buildings had become very run-down and the abbey was seen as a sink of iniquity. It had once been renowned for its wonderful artistic works, but all that had fallen into decay and no one seemed interested in reviving its once great standard of education. This must have seemed more than strange to the young Suger because the abbey had also been a place of coronation and burial of kings for some time, and Suger grew up in the presence of their tombs; men such as Dagobert I, who had died as far back as AD 638. Indeed, the great emperor Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, had such a devotion to St-Denis that he had been buried in a previous church on or near the site in AD 741. Although it had fallen into a period of decline in terms of fabric, affection and spiritual fashion, it had a sound enough pedigree to be brought back into the centre of royal and noble patronage, and Suger was just the man to do it.

He was a monk, of course, but he also had one of the finest legal minds of the time. He mastered fluent spoken Latin at a young age, which made him extremely useful, Latin being the lingua franca of Europe and beyond, and, as he had a real gift for negotiation, he was often employed by the king on foreign affairs. He was physically courageous in warfare (although you might ask what business a monk had on the battlefield), and we know that Suger played an active part in the siege of Le Puiset in 1111. His involvement and blood-lust weighed on his conscience towards the end of his life when he must have wondered how he would pass them off to the Almighty on the Day of Judgement. He, who had been so courageous in active life, wept with fear on his deathbed.

Abbot Suger’s best-known legacy was the launching of the Gothic movement, and yet his most high-profile work in his lifetime was as co-Regent of France for two years with Ralph of Vermandois and Archbishop Samson of Rheims, when Louis VII decided to go on Crusade in 1147. The appointment was a remarkable accolade for a man who, while not of common stock, was far from being a nobleman. Being an abbot entailed much responsibility and power, so Suger was not thrust into the limelight from total obscurity; the abbey of St-Denis may have been dilapidated, but it still had high status. Suger was well known at court, regarded as a friend by both Louis VI and Louis VII while having his own set of enemies and detractors, too. He was known to be a strict disciplinarian, ruling the abbey with a firm hand, but he was genuinely concerned about the welfare of his monks and, although he shamelessly favoured his relatives whenever he had the power to do so, he does not appear to have milked the system for himself. He was described as seeming to be impervious either to great sadness or great happiness, and so we might see him as something of a cold fish until we also hear that he loved Christmas and liked telling stories late into the night to the enjoyment of all.

If all these activities were not enough, he had established himself as a builder specializing in military fortifications, notably at Traublay, Rouvray and Toury, so he had a good grounding in the logistics, organization and practicalities of a major building project.6 Of course, he employed a Master Mason for his work at St-Denis, but he certainly maintained a very personal involvement. Most building projects take the name of the man who commissioned them, giving the impression that that person was actively involved. In Suger’s case, this was true. Happily for us, he wrote an account afterwards at the request of his monks. From this we know that he had always wanted to have a go at transforming the church and that the original building was so cramped that on major feast days ‘the narrowness of the place forced women to run to the altar on the heads of men as on a pavement with great anguish and confusion’ (most possibly an exaggeration!).7 Work began at the west end of the church and Suger himself wrote the verses that were engraved in copper-gilt on the doors:

For the glory of the church which nurtured and raised him,

Suger strove….

Bright is the noble work but, being nobly bright, the work

Should brighten the minds, allowing them to travel through the lightsTo the true light, where Christ is the true door …8

This seems to epitomize Suger’s dream. He filled his church with luxurious ornaments and designed the choir in the Gothic style with a vaulted roof such as had been seen at Durham four decades earlier. He was absorbed by light and how that might have a religious interpretation or implication. At the most obvious level, he had the windows painted with biblical stories and recorded their details, even down to which separate stories were shown in the same window. The glass was quite simply marvellous to the people who saw it. They were used to rich, shiny things in their churches, but had never before beheld anything that glowed according to the time of day or the strength of the light outside. It must have been as if God Himself were controlling the messages within them and this will have made an enormous impression on visitors to the church. We are used to seeing light changing through coloured glass; we even use colour to control our traffic and we think nothing of changing the strength of a dimmer switch to get a different ambience. It is not miraculous to us. This new ‘nobly bright’ work was regarded as being there to brighten minds. The colours were brilliant in a new way because they were translucent, the windows seeming to expand as the sun brightened and so were almost bursting with the religious fervour their stories were meant to convey. This was wonderful, tremendous and terrifying. What Suger might not have expected was the effect the coloured glass would have on the floor. We have all seen light shafting through stained glass and making coloured pools on church floors or walls. What we may not have thought about are its implications; it is reflected light, of course, but in this case, it is light that has been filtered through religious stories and comes from the direction of Heaven. How big a leap of imagination would it have taken for people like Suger to have wondered if this new light within the house of God was not actually carrying the essence of that very God? If one were a true believer, as Suger undoubtedly was, then to stand in such light must have been both awe-inspiring and terrible.

The new choir containing these wonderful windows and other new Gothic features was consecrated on 11 June 1144, and was attended by all the great and good of the land: Louis VII, his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (who would later marry Henry II of England), the archbishops of Rouen, Rheims and Canterbury, thirteen bishops including those of Chartres, Evreux, Châlons, Meaux, Sens and Auxerre as well as leading religious figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux. The occasion was so splendid and the new architecture and glass so mind-bogglingly gorgeous that it did not take long for it to become the ‘must-have’ style for any new cathedral. In fact, as already indicated, what became the Gothic style was already finding favour in other parts of Europe.

Renewed spirituality during a time of change

In our day ideas spread rapidly; we are increasingly led to believe that we can have anything we want as soon as we want it. That was not the case in the Middle Ages. The Romanesque/Norman style was relatively new in Britain, being less than a century old. However, on the Continent it had endured considerably longer. It was not the habit of the Western Christian Church or, indeed, society to swing wildly from one new fashion to another, which makes us wonder whether there were other forces at work and if Suger’s architectural experiment just happened to coincide, and, yes, chime, with changes in thinking. If we wonder whether a renewed spirituality was linked to the new architecture, we would have to ask ourselves why there might have been the need for one. It is true that there were changes afoot, that the twelfth century was one of persecution, which always indicates a lack of confidence, that monastic houses were flourishing and new monastic orders arising. The man in the street increasingly called upon the Virgin Mary for her help and religious thinking seemed to be focused more on the humanity of Christ. Yet the Vatican must have seemed to be losing its grip with repeated challenges from anti-popes (those who set themselves up as pope in opposition to the legally elected one for a variety of reasons, but mainly for power, money and thinking that they were better suited to the position, even if they had not been elected). There have been twenty-five anti-popes, ten of whom operated in the twelfth century.

The events of the twelfth century were so varied and important in terms of church administration that they will have had an effect separately and jointly, and the sum of them must have influenced spiritual thinking of the day. A key factor in this would be the state of the Church in Europe. In 1074, Pope Gregory VII had reasserted the Church’s authority by banning lay investiture and that had brought him into direct conflict with Henry IV of Germany. The problem was that kings and emperors had assumed responsibility for filling vacancies when a bishop or abbot died, and they often appointed a member of their family or a friend or someone else in exchange for cash. This meant that those in lucrative episcopal positions had often had no theological training and even less interest in doing anything other than collecting revenues. Homage was required of these appointees before they were consecrated, giving a clear message as to where their allegiance was to lie. This applied in England, too, with matters coming to a head in 1099 when Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to do homage to Henry I or to consecrate bishops who had received lay investiture.9 The lack of confidence in the bishops spread down the chain to parish priests who were not all thought to have their minds fully on the job; indeed, many were guilty of immoral behaviour. A major cause of concern at the time was whether or not their work was valid: in effect, if they had been ordained by a bishop who had not been consecrated properly, were they real priests themselves? In addition, if they were not proficient, or were full of sin themselves, was it legitimate to make Confession to them or even to receive Communion from them? Worse than that, if they baptized your child, was he really baptized and if such a priest administered the Last Rites to you, would it be enough to help you get into Paradise? Had you been able to atone or not? These were crucial questions at the time and caused much angst as people were genuinely frightened that they might be permanently barred from Paradise simply because of disagreement and lax behaviour among those in authority. Much depended on the local bishop because it became clear that consistency of religious practice was disappearing. It is noteworthy that up until the twelfth century there had also been a remarkable uniformity in church art right across Europe and Britain. Such art that survives shows clearly that, for example, the march of strange bestial heads on the outside of a twelfth-century church was uncannily similar in style to others such as at Barfrestone in Kent, Kilpeck in Herefordshire, Castor in Cambridgeshire, Studland in Dorset, Poitiers and Aulnay in France, and Santiago de Compostela and Frómista in Spain. This will be considered more closely in Chapter Seven.

The response of the Catholic Church

The Church’s response to what must have been viewed as chaos within its walls was to lay down some rules, which were thrashed out at the Lateran Councils, a series of four councils held at the Lateran Palace in Rome in 1123, 1139, 1179 and 1215, each under a different pope. They gradually worked out a framework of administration and a code of behaviour, even going into such detail as how to deal with drunken clerics and forbidding clergy from engaging in secular pursuits such as playing games of chance, visiting taverns or attending unbecoming exhibitions: priests were expected to live virtuously. Matters must have got into a bad state if they had to consider that level of legislation! An annual conference was to be held to check any abuses within churches, not just in the sense of following the correct liturgy, but also mundane things such as storing household goods in the church building. Some individuals such as Abélard, whose writings had been publicly burnt at Soissons in 1121, challenged the Church. Amongst other things, Abélard had made a collection of quotations from the Bible and from the writings of the Fathers of the Church that seemed to him to show inconsistencies in teaching by the Christian Church. He arranged his findings in a compilation called Sic et Non (‘Yes and No’). He explored every possible theological argument and managed to cause the utmost offence to large sections of society and the Church along the way.

Monastic life was attractive in the Middle Ages. It might not appeal so much in the twenty-first, but then, if someone had no family or support group and a strong religious belief (or even if they did not), it must have seemed a sensible solution. Holy men and women were held in high esteem and monasteries were associated not only with spirituality, but with status. The twelfth century, therefore, brought not only Gothic architecture and an increase in challenges, but also a plethora of new monastic orders. The last two items seem to contradict each other, but they also show a breaking away from the secular Church in different ways. As a reaction to what must have seemed to have been a maelstrom of dissidence, impiety and dissolute learning, the Church did two things almost as though it were trying to attract the attention of lay people. First, the Church instituted new feast days and, second, it encouraged the cult of the Blessed Virgin; never before had Christian worship in Europe been so Mary-orientated.

In Christianity, Mary is the mother of the Son of God and, therefore, extremely powerful in her own right. To this day, St Mary is the most popular church dedication in Britain, outnumbering the next most popular, All Saints, by two to one. She represents the human face of God; someone who would understand the tedium of daily life and its sorrows because she had lived them. She had been one of us, but also not one of us since she had been so pure that she had been chosen to carry the Son of God. Perhaps one of the most important things about her was that she had lost a son, something all too many people could relate to in the Middle Ages. She is often shown as a tender mother, never more so than on a thirteenth-century voussoir of one of the west doors of Rheims cathedral, where she looks surprisingly relaxed and modern as she swaddles the Holy Child on a wicker basket. At the end of her life, she was taken up into Heaven on the Day of Assumption (15 August), where she was crowned Queen of Heaven by her son. The story of the Assumption had already become popular in the tenth century – indeed, the first depiction of it in Western art is in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold made at Winchester after AD 971.10 This was much assisted by a nun called Elizabeth of Schönau, who had a vision about this very subject in the late 1150s, just when the cult of Mary was getting into its stride.

At this time, rosaries came into vogue. They are said to have been invented by St Dominic c.1200 in Spain and, although their origin is not clear, they were